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[Peter Mikes]

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To: grassu-list at max.cecer.army.mil
Subject:  GRASS OBJECTS, GUI etc..


>Tom Moore          tmoore at pnfi.forestry.ca
>Petawawa National Forestry Institute           
                                                 Wrote

>The approach I favor would break down GRASS functionality currently
>accessible through the standard interactive and non-interactive commands
>into more primitive and orthogonal elements, and then organize all those
>elements in object-oriented (rather than function-oriented) fashion under
>a coherent GUI.

   That looks like the right approach to me.

   I want to add few questions about future extension to functionality of grass,
   since that may have some bearing on what GUI would have to handle.
  
  1) nD capability= (n-dimensions): Such requirement is illustrated by Tom Charnock               
                   ( charnotw at aston.ac.uk ) when he says    

   : I need to store borehole data in grass for links with a ground water 
   : flow model....  
         The depth and time are 2 additional dimensions.  
         Perhaps "slice" programs (and HDF) chould be integrated  with grass
         Obviously, once you store such data, user will want to display them...
         
 2) Display->DB link: May be there is a better name for this. I mean 
         capability of user to 'pick' object from the display and have DataBase
         to respond - e.g. by displaying the name, some attributes, etc
         
 3) Simulation support: Looks like quite a few people are using GIS for
         hydrology studies, these days, both surface and  ground water.
         ( That is of interest to us here as well, as DOE will be spending lot of money
          on remediation over next decade(s). )
	  There are some common tools, such as irregular mesh 'objects' 
	  which are closely tied to GIS data ...
          
 May be some of these capabilities exist; I am just learning to use grass and
 am looking for them. I would like to know if some grasshoppers perceive such
 need or may found a way..